


Beck and Call

by atamascolily



Series: Inheritance [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Botany, Ecology, First Meetings, Force Trees, Force Visions, Gen, Myrkr (Star Wars), Planet Dagobah (Star Wars), Ysalamiri (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26072824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Luke returns to his favorite swamp planet for evidence of a historic Dark Jedi, only to encounter a mysterious voice calling him elsewhere. Of course he's going to investigate.Fate, however, has other plans for him.(A remix/re-envisioning ofHeir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn with more botany, plot-relevant macguffins, and UST.)
Series: Inheritance [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/971142
Comments: 19
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because this is a remix/rewrite of canon material, I have occasionally pulled lines (either verbatim or paraphrased) from _Heir to the Empire_ by Timothy Zahn, though the bulk of the writing is entirely my own. 
> 
> Zahn says that Leia doesn't know that Luke trained with Yoda on Dagobah, yet she name-drops Dagobah casually to him in a different context. I don't buy it, so I've put Leia in the know from the get-go.
> 
> "All things fade eventually. Even the stars burn out," is a callback to one of my favorite lines from the _Revenge of the Sith_ novelization by Matthew Stover.

To say Artoo wasn't thrilled when Luke announced their destination was an understatement. The little droid complained right up until the moment they made the jump to Dagobah, upon which he switched to less dramatic but equally aggressive sulking. Shaking his head, Luke did his best to ignore the astromech's antics and slipped into a hibernation trance. By the time the X-wing's proximity alarm announced their arrival in-system, his good temper was restored, but Artoo's wasn't.

As always, a quick orbital scan pinged no obvious technology, which didn't surprise Luke. A planet was a big place, especially when he didn't even know exactly what he was looking for. Maybe the Great Tree, the ancient uneti secreted away in the swamp not too far from Yoda's hut, would have some ideas about where to begin his search.

At least the scanners kept working as they went in for a landing near Yoda's old home site. Luke had never had his equipment fail so dramatically before or since. He'd never figured out _why_ , and wondered if Yoda had been responsible, manipulating Luke's arrival to keep his would-be student perpetually off-guard.

If so, he'd succeeded. Luke still cringed at the memory of their first meeting--how rude and judgmental he had been, so fixed on his own ideas of what a Jedi master should look like he had noticed the one right in front of him. It was not his finest moment.

After the X-wing settled on solid ground after a nerve-wracking but ultimately successful landing, Luke switched off the engines, and began peeling off his helmet and flight suit to reveal the black jumpsuit beneath. He wouldn't admit it to Artoo, but Dagobah wasn't his favorite place either. But here he was, back again after all this time to a place he'd honestly never expected to visit again.

It wasn't just the humidity and mud that bothered him--he'd slogged through his fair share of jungles in his time with the Rebellion. He wasn't fond of the local wildlife, either, but while snakes, slugs, and ticks were annoying, few were as actively dangerous as, say, the furry predator that had attacked Luke and his tauntaun back on Hoth.

No, it was the lack of direct sunlight that bothered Luke--whatever light made it through the thick bands of clouds in the upper atmosphere was vague and diffuse, infusing his surroundings with a surreal edge that messed with Luke's sense of time. Dagobah was slippery and elusive, a mystery that Luke had given up trying to pin down with logic and reason, but he'd never be fully comfortable here.

Yoda had chided Luke for always looking to the horizon - on Dagobah, there was literally no horizon to distract him. Hemmed in by the ever-present mist, any chance of perspective was lost, replaced by a nagging claustrophobia Luke had never known he'd had.

Nothing was in this place was ever ever what it seemed. Giant white spiders could be ossified gnarltrees (or perhaps vice versa). Seemingly solid ground could pitch and collapse without warning. A tiny, wrinkled creature wrapped in coarse grey rags was a powerful Jedi master who could lift a starfighter out of the swamp without breaking a sweat.

Luke had far too many memories of this place, and so many of them were raw and painful.

Mist swirled around him as he opened the hatch and eased himself out of the cockpit. Luke rolled out the dismount ladder and eased himself to the ground, squinting as he took in what little he could of their surroundings. There was no sign of Yoda's hut, which ought to have been visible from here, even with the omnipresent fog pressing in.

"Are you sure we're in the right spot?" he asked Artoo. "According to the coordinates, we should be less than twenty meters from Yoda's house."

Artoo whistled a irritated confirmation.

"Hey, I wasn't insulting your piloting skills, I know you're doing your best," Luke said. "Let me know if your scanners pick up any evidence of the Bpfasshi ship or anything else electronic."

Artoo opined that the odds of finding anything in the vicinity were astronomical even with the X-wing's scanners augmenting his own, but he would do his best.

Privately, Luke agreed. This entire trip was probably a wild bantha chase from start to finish, and he didn't blame Artoo for his lack of enthusiasm. But Luke hadn't been able to get the idea that they mind find something out of his mind since Leia had left for that diplomatic mission to Bpfassh.

They had both planned for Luke to accompany her--only to learn at the last minute that the Bpfasshi were virulently anti-Jedi. And with good reason: a group of theirs had gone rogue during the height of the Clone Wars and terrorized the populace they were supposed to protect. Even after thirty years and a a galaxy-wide purge, the Bpfasshi delegation had no intention of letting Luke into their system, let alone on planet.

"Those Dark Jedi concentrated their activities on Bpfassh, but they ravaged all over the Sluis sector. One of them even got as far as Dagobah before he was caught," Leia had said, shaking her head.

Luke's voice had caught in his throat at the name. "Dagobah?"

Leia met his gaze evenly. She knew what Dagobah was, what it meant to him. "Yeah. You gonna go and check it out?"

She knew him so well. Luke nodded. "What else am I going to do if you won't let me tag along?"

His tone was light and teasing, but Leia didn't smile. The kidnapping attempt on Bimmisaari by the unknown grey aliens had deeply unsettled her, and she was still on edge. "I wish I could, Luke, but we already caused a major diplomatic incident this week, and I really don't want another one so soon. Fey'lya's already giving me enough shit as it is without handing him more fuel. Do you really think there's anything on Dagobah left to find?"

"I don't know" Luke said. "I never saw any signs of Dark Jedi when I was training there, but the Clone Wars weren't that long ago, and there might still be some traces left. The Great Tree may remember more details, if nothing else." He smiled at the thought of visiting with that ancient uneti again--the one bright spot of any trip to Dagobah. "And even if I don't learn anything new, it'll at least keep me out of your hair and out of trouble."

"I wouldn't count on that last one," Han Solo cut in, wrapping his arm around Leia. " _Falcon_ 's ready and waiting, sweetheart. We better get going if we're going to stay on schedule."

“Right,” Leia agreed, latching her lightsaber to her belt and heading for the door with her husband. She paused at the door to glance back at Luke. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

"You, too," Luke said with a wave meant to be reassuring. "May the Force be with you."

So here he was for the first time since Yoda's death five years ago. Why, he wondered again, had the rogue Bpfasshi Dark Jedi come _here_ , of all places? Had he merely sought an isolated place to hide out and lay low while he evaded pursuit? Or had something else drawn him to Dagobah?

Luke shivered, despite the sweat beading on his forehead from the humidity. First things first. While Artoo busied himself with scanning, he was going to go pay his respects, such as they were. "I'm going go take a look at the house for a moment," he announced, and the little droid blew a raspberry in acknowledgment.

Aside from the fact that Yoda's hut had disappeared, Dagobah hadn't changed. Luke picked his way slowly and carefully over the fetid pools and mossy hummocks, until he reached the spot where both memory and Artoo's plotted coordinates insisted the house should be.

It wasn't there. Or, rather, what was there wasn't a house anymore. Closer inspection revealed that the shelter had collapsed inward on itself under a tangle of vines so thick it was difficult to see anything else and dissolved into a pile of mud and stone. The only evidence that it had been any kind of shelter at all was the crumbling chimney poking out of the mass of vegetation, two lichen-crusted iron pots jammed against the base of the old stone hearth.

Luke swallowed, a lump building in his throat as he stared at the wreckage. He should have known it would be like this. The same thing had happened when he'd gone back Ben's hermitage on Tatooine, stood over the graves he'd dug for his aunt and uncle beside the burned-out ruins of his childhood home. The only difference was how quickly the landscape had reclaimed the abandoned dwelling for its own--and that Luke had managed closure of sorts with Yoda before he died.

Yoda was with the Force now, always there, always around him--and always out of reach. Unlike Ben's ghost, who had appeared off and on until his last visit a few weeks earlier, Luke had never seen Yoda's spirit after that one brief contact in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor. Yoda had stood alongside Ben and Anakin Skywalker, beaming with a pride and joy that Luke had never seen from him in life.

If his teacher was still watching him from the afterlife, Luke hoped his actions would still merit such approval. Failing that, he'd settle for a long lecture, or even a whack from his stick if it meant a chance for reassurance or advice on what to do next.

But Yoda was silent, and Ben was gone, and there was no help for it. Luke was on his own until he found more Jedi or began training new ones.

On a whim, Luke cut through the vines with his lightsaber, and bent to pick up one of the iron pots. A snake curled up inside hissed at the disturbance, and he jerked back involuntarily to keep from getting bitten for his troubles. " _Some_ things don't change," he sighed, and retreated back to the X-wing to see what Artoo was up to.

To his surprise, the astromech reported the scanners had detected something electronic not far off. The triumphant announcement was followed by a far more tentative query.

"No, you don't have to leave your socket," Luke assured him. "If it's less than a kilometer away, I can investigate more quickly on foot, and you can guide me in. That way you can use the ship's computer to let me know when I'm getting close." He grabbed his comlink from the X-wing's storage unit, and clipped it to his belt as Artoo warbled a grudging affirmative.

***

The route Artoo plotted out lead him straight to the cave, because of course it did.

"Oh," said Luke, surprised even though he really shouldn't have been. He'd been so focused on following Artoo's verbal instructions he hadn't paid attention to where he was going. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. 

He'd always wondered what must have happened for this place to be so strong in the Dark Side. He'd never understood how a _place_ could be so steeped in evil, and Yoda had never explained. Standing here now, with Artoo still trilling directions over the comlink, it was obvious that the Bpfasshi Dark Jedi must have been responsible. In which case--

Something terrible must have happened here before other Jedi had arrived to stop him.

All of Luke's senses prickled at the realization. He tensed, but the swamp was quiet and eerily still. Tucked under the crumpled remains of what had once been a massive tree, the entrance to the cave yawned like a mouth to the underworld, cold and ominous.

He shouldn't be afraid. He'd faced his demons here before--first at Yoda's prompting, then again his teacher's death, passing the test with his mirror-self that he'd originally failed. He knew himself and his heritage now, and this place could hold no further horrors for him.

Still, that didn't mean he liked it.

Luke took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm about to go underground," he said into the comlink. "I might lose signal down there, so don't panic if I drop off for a bit, okay? Stay with me for as long as you can, and let me know when I'm getting close."

Artoo said panic was undignified and reserved for beings with a central nervous system and a lack of common sense, but he'd take Luke's caution under advisement.

"You and me both," Luke muttered under his breath. Squaring his shoulders, he ducked under the gnarled tree roots and stepped into the cave.

He realized belatedly as the darkness pressed around him that he hadn't thought to bring a glowlamp. He was going to have to use his lightsaber, and hope the cave didn't take the weapon as a sign of aggression and respond accordingly. For all his Jedi powers and experience, he still didn't trust himself in the dark, not in this place.

He drew his lightsaber and the green blade flickered into existence, its hum a soothing backdrop against the rasp of his own breathing. He pressed onward slowly and carefully, scanning the ground for any signs of the Dark Jedi's presence, even though Artoo indicated that whatever the scanners had picked up was still ahead.

But nothing happened. He made his way over and around the roots, nearly tripping once but quickly catching himself before he fell. He'd always wondered who had dug this passage underneath the tree, who had built the stone opening that had caved in somewhere between his first visit and his last one. Was the Dark Jedi responsible for that, too, or had it been someone else?

But nothing happened. No shadowy figures confronted him, no walking nightmares sprang to life, and there was no sign other than his nagging, creeping sense of dread that anything was wrong at all. Even the reptiles that he remembered from previous visits appeared to have cleared out. The cave was empty.

He didn't trust it.

The comlink twittered on Luke's belt: Artoo, urging him to keep going. Whatever the X-wing's sensors had detected was just ahead.

"Great," Luke said sarcastically, though he was glad for the excuse to pick up the pace. "Just tell me when I get close--"

The cave vanished. He hovered in midair over a massive lake, ringed on all sides by what must be what must be the extinct cinder cone of an ancient volcano. An island rose from the center of the lake, atop which a stone castle rose--and standing atop the battlements, his long gray hair streaming behind him in the wind, was an old man staring at him.

Luke yelped in surprise and jerked backwards, grateful to find he was still holding his lightsaber. The old man didn't _seem_ like an enemy, but his gaze was harsh and stern, radiating a fierce possessiveness that Luke wasn't sure he liked. The length of his grizzled beard rivaled that of his hair, and he wore simple robes cut in an achingly familiar style and color, which had fallen open at the top to expose a muscular chest, with prominent veins rippling across his clavicle.

A Jedi?

 _Luke?_ said the man, his dark eyes boring straight into Luke's own.

 _Who--?_ Luke started. This couldn't be the Dark Jedi he'd been looking for--the Bpfasshi weren't human. Was this a vision brought on by the cave? Was this a vision of the past, or a future yet to come?

And how did he know Luke's name?

 _You will come to me, Luke,_ the man said. _You *must* come to me. I will await you here._

Luke lowered his lightsaber, curiosity winning out over paranoia. _Where are you?_

 _You will find me._ Images flashed his his mind--sweeping vistas of open ocean punctuated by distant islands; a trio of blue-green moons hanging at night over the roar of the tide. _You will find me . . . and the Jedi shall rise again. Until then, farewell._

 _Wait!_ But the image dissolved, leaving Luke once more alone in the cave... and Artoo was frantically hailing him over the comlink.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine," Luke said absently, wondering how long he'd been unresponsive to merit such a panicked reaction. "What? Oh. You say I'm on top of whatever it is you're sensing?" He looked down at his feet. "I don't see anything, but--"

Shifting the lightsaber to his left hand, he knelt and started digging through the muck. "I don't see anything here, but--"

Wait. Something silver and metallic glinted in his saber's ghost-green light. Luke dug it out of the moss and turned it over in his free hand, trying to figure out what exactly he was looking at.

It was a small, flattened cylinder a little longer than his hand, with five triangular, rust-encrusted keys on one side and some flowing alien script engraved on the other. "Okay, I found something," Luke said, tucking it away into his belt pouch. "Are the scanners picking up anything else?"

Artoo beeped a negative and another question. "No, I don’t know what it is," Luke said. He looked around, as if expecting another vision at any moment, but the cave remained real and solid around him. "Well, if that's the only thing in here, then I'm coming out."

To Luke's relief, he made it back to the ship without incident.

"While you're running your analysis on --whatever this is," Luke said, passing the cylinder to Artoo, "I want you to start looking for a planet." He did his best to describe the vision he had seen in the cave. "I don't know where that place is, but I know we have to go there. There might be a Jedi master there."

Artoo warbled in dismay at the prospect--though he did admit that the castle in Luke's vision sounded like a much nicer place than this soggy mudhole.

"Yeah, Dagobah wouldn't be my first choice for a retirement home either," Luke agreed. He rummaged through his gear until he found a ration bar, shucked off the wrapper, and gnawed on it thoughtfully for a moment. "Go ahead and get started with that analysis," he said, muffled by his mouthful. "I'll be back in a bit."

A plaintive query from the astromech.

"Yes, of course, I'm going to see the tree now," Luke said. He'd let Artoo in on the secret of the Great Tree's existence when he'd asked the little droid to safeguard the uneti seeds Luke had collected after Yoda's death, rather than letting them fall into the hands of the Empire when Luke had decided to surrender to Vader on Endor. Artoo, who had a vendetta against the flora and fauna of Dagobah on general principle, remained unconvinced that _this_ tree deserved special treatment, but grudgingly tolerated the uneti's existence as long as Luke didn't ask him to tag along.

(The uneti seeds, too precious to carry with him, were tucked away in a secret hiding spot in the sub-basement of the Imperial Palace. By the war with the Empire was well and truly over, perhaps he'd have figured out a safe place to finally plant them.)

Artoo made a sound that was the audio equivalent of an eyeroll, and set to work.

***

There was no shortage of trees on Dagobah, but there was one that towered over all the others, both literally and figuratively. When Luke emerged from the tallreed grove into open marsh, the Great Tree stood before him, rising up out of the swamp with its wide, sweeping branches like literally nothing else on this world.

 _"Last of its kind, this tree is,"_ Yoda had said, but Luke hadn't needed his teacher to explain how special it was. The uneti had reached out to Luke, welcoming him with an unconditional openness that he had never experienced before or since from any living being, welcoming him as if he had always been here. As if he belonged here. As if he were home.

The Great Tree had grown here on Dagobah for thousands of years. Luke still didn't know how it had come to be here, nor how it had survived the purge that had destroyed the rest of its species and the Jedi with them. Much of the connection between the two groups was mysterious, yet Luke never questioned why his predecessors had planted them at every temple and outpost they settled across the length and breadth of the galaxy. In the Great Tree's presence, he was home at last, more himself than anything else. If the other uneti were anything like the Great Tree, of course the old Jedi would have cherished them.

Maybe that was why Yoda had chosen Dagobah for his hermitage-in-exile. Maybe he needed that reminder of home in a galaxy torn apart by war and destruction--that continual reminder that he was not, and never alone.

And if Luke's vision of the Jedi from the cave was a true one, and not some delusion from the Dark Side, then other Jedi had survived besides Yoda, and perhaps more uneti had, too. He dared to hope.

His chronometer said it was evening, but ever-present fog meant dusk snuck up quickly here on Dagobah. As much as Luke dreaded the thought of navigating the swamp after dark, he couldn't bring himself to rush. In the presence of the Great Tree, there was all the time in the world.

He picked his way across the stepping stone to the base of the uneti, leaning back against the massive trunk and staring up at its branches. The tree didn't move, but but its presence reached out, drawing him into a comforting embrace.

 _You've returned_ , the Great Tree said slowly. 

Luke let out a long breath. "Yes."

_Your heart is troubled._

Luke pictured the cave in his mind--the dark roots swirling into the earth, that eerie sense of coldness, the secrets lingering in the shadows. He imagined the Bpfasshi Dark Jedi stalking through the landscape with the arrogance worthy of the Sith, lord and master of all he surveyed, the mysterious cylinder clutched in his hand. _Do you know what happened there?_

The uneti did not conceive of space and time as Luke did. There was no gap between past and present, no filtration and no boundaries. He was drawn up into the tree's lived experienced, perceiving the memories as if it were his own body bound to the earth.

Yet such far from being constricted, the groundedness was liberating. Roots touched roots, stretching across the swamp in a chain that linking him into a vast network of experience across the entire planet. Without the Great Tree to shield, it would have been too much sensation all at once, but under its direction, a story emerged, one that was _lived_ as much as narrated--

Once upon a time, there had been two uneti tree here on Dagobah: the Great Tree in the swamp and its twin at the spot that would one day become the cave. All had been well for millennia until the Bpfasshi Dark Jedi had come, like a dark shadow over the sun, and the other uneti was twisted and distorted in his wake.

 _How_ wasn't clear, nor was _why_. There was only pain: a burning cancer that had stretched through its screaming victim, leaving death and desolation in its wake worse than any wildlife.

The darkness had consumed the other tree from the inside out, leaving only a twisted wreck in its place. The hapless uneti screamed and screamed, no longer alive, yet unable to truly die.

 _And then what happened?_ Luke pressed. _How did it end?_

The Great Tree shivered. _It didn't_.

The pressure built to a heady buzz in Luke's head as the Dark Jedi turned his attention towards the Great Tree itself. Then a small figure emerged out of the shadows, leaning on a walking stick as he made his way slowly and steadily towards the poor withered uneti and challenged the darkness.

Luke's heart leapt in his throat as realization dawned. _Yoda_!

Blue-white fire lit the swamp as the two Jedi collided. Gnarltrees exploded in a shrapnel of splinters as lightning forked from tree to tree in a continuous chain. Pheromone screams of the voiceless flora stained the air as the damp earth scorched and sputtered. Sparks smouldered below the surface of the swamp, as damp peat burned with choking black smoke--punctuated by fiercer blazes where pockets of organic gases had been set alight.

And then the world was quiet again.

Luke came to himself gasping for breath, curled up against the trunk of the Great Tree with his arms wrapped around his head for protection. His battle against the Emperor had been relatively brief--this one had raged for days, felt by every living thing on the planet. He sat up, shaky and weak. "That was terrifying," he said aloud, clinging to the solidity of words as his own physical body.

The Great Tree agreed wholeheartedly with his assessment.

Luke nodded, still processing the confusing maelstrom of foreign memories and sensations. "And the explosion created the cave. But the other tree is still there--"

 _It lingers. We are difficult to burn._ A hint of pride at that hard-worn survivorship, the reward of millennia of conflagrations in the distant past.

"So it's still alive--?"

The tree's answer was sensations rather than words: echoes in the night, ripples in the water, the reflections of distant stars from light-years past. A sinkhole, gathering darkness and concentrating it in the deeps.

The cave formed around the roots and trunk of the twisted uneti by the Dark Jedi's death, and the emotional resonance lingered through space and time. The spirits were gone, but their suffering remained--augmented and amplified by their connection to the Force.

"Will it ever end?" Luke whispered, horrified by the revelation. You couldn't put something out its misery if there wasn't anything there left to experience it. You might as well try to heal an echo or a supernova.

The tree gave the arboreal equivalent of a shrug. _All things fade eventually. Even the stars burn out._

That was not exactly comforting, but the uneti was so calm, so matter of fact, that Luke was oddly reassured. The Great Tree did not understand death the way he did--just like it didn't understand the human concept of a fixed self or time. For the Great Tree, everything was in flux, nothing abides, except for the flux, which was nothing more or less than the Force itself.

Luke swallowed, and showed the tree his vision from the cave. _Do you know if there are there other Jedi out there?_

The tree considered this question gravely. _I have not heard them. Perhaps they have not called to me. But--_

Luke's vision flickered as the Great Tree reached out towards the stars, drawing him along in its wake. A human woman stood silhouetted against the stars, so lost in her own thoughts she didn't seem to notice Luke's presence. Just as Luke was about to reach out, she shook herself and stalked away out of his field of vision.

 _Wait!_ Luke started--but he was back into his body before he could get the words out.

 _Curious,_ said the Great Tree, apparently witness to the entire encounter. _*Very* curious. She calls, though not for me._

"What's that supposed to mean?" Luke snapped. Were there _two_ Jedi out there? The man from his vision in the cave who had known Luke's name, and the mysterious woman? Or was there no connection whatsoever? "Calls for _what?_ "

The Great Tree was immune to Luke's display of temper. _Go find out_.

Faced with such matter-of-fact calm, Luke's frustration evaporated, and a deep wave of doubt rose in its place. He was embarrassed for the tree to witness such petty emotions, but hiding them was worse. _What if I can't find any others? What if I can't bring the Jedi back, the way I haven't been able to plant the seeds? Five years have passed, and I have so little to show for it--_

The Great Tree's boundless optimism rolled over him, the slow and steady certainty of a survivor who had survived so much for so long that five years was a mere eyeblink in comparison.

_Patience. You will find the way through. You will._

And if the last uneti believed Luke could do it, then Luke would believe it, too. 

***

By the time he got back to the ship, it was fully dark, but Artoo had thoughtfully turned the landing lights on for guidance so the last hundred meters weren't as much of a slog as they could have been. The little droid gurgled in relief as his scanners registered Luke's approach, though he refused to admit as much when Luke teased him about it. 

"So?" Luke said, hauling himself up into the cockpit and slumping back in his seat. "What'd you find?"

Artoo's account was brief and to the point. The cylinder appeared to be some sort of short-range transmitting device, miraculously still functional after three decades, though exactly what it was transmitting was still undetermined. The computer had found no matches for the script on the side, but whatever it was, it wasn't Bpfasshi.

"I guess we can ask Threepio about it when Leia gets back to Coruscant," Luke said. "I still think it must have belonged to the Dark Jedi, though--unless it was something of Yoda's. But if it _was_ Yoda's, I don't understand why he would have left it there for all those years..."

He shook his head. The Great Tree's account of that battle had answered some of Luke's questions and raised so many others. And with Yoda gone, he might never learn the full story.

But Artoo had found coordinates for a place that appeared to match Luke's vision from the cave--an isolated little system in the Outer Rim called Jomark.

The navcomputer entry for the system was sparse and to the point. The only inhabited planet, also called Jomark, was mostly ocean, with one continent and a large scattering of archipelagoes, reasonably temperate. Less than three million people, all told--or at least at the time of the last official census, thirty years ago.

Exactly the sort of place a Jedi might choose to hide from the Empire.

Yoda had claimed on his deathbed that Luke was the last of the Jedi. But he might have been mistaken. Or--and this still hurt--Yoda could have intentionally mislead him, as Ben had done with Vader's true identity. 

But if Ben and Yoda had been able to remain hidden from the Empire all those years, there was no reason another Jedi couldn't have pulled the same trick. Could have hidden so deeply that not even another Jedi could find them.

And was there a connection between his vision in the cave and the mysterious woman who had been calling for--what, exactly? Or whom? 

The Great Tree was right. There was only one thing to do.

 _Go find out_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With all due respect to Mara, I've always been skeptical of Zahn's assertion that Mara snagging Luke's lightsaber on Jabba's sail barge would have stopped him for long, so I've cut that out here in favor of a different connection.
> 
> If you're curious what I think would have happened if Mara had been on the sail barge, check out my fic [Smooth Sailing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17278991).


	2. Chapter 2

Luke sent a message to the _Millennium Falcon_ before he and Artoo left the Dagobah system to let Han and Leia know about their unexpected detour to Jomark. His message was brief and to the point, but the Empire must have cracked the New Republic encryption codes en route, because Luke was jolted out of his hibernation trance by Artoo's announcement they were coming out of hyperspace twenty light-years off from their destination. 

One glance out the viewport and it was easy to see why: the X-wing was caught in the mass shadow of an Interdictor-class cruiser and had dropped out of hyperspace to keep itself from being torn apart by the artificial gravity well it generated. Though the Interdictor bore no obvious markings, they were expensive enough that smugglers rarely got their hands on them--and pirate ships rarely cozied up to Imperial Star Destroyers like the one flanking it.

Luke swore. Apparently, the Empire hadn't taken the hint about the failed kidnapping attempt on Bimmissaari, and decided to go for the direct approach. Which meant that Han and Leia were in danger--but he'd have to save himself first if he had any chance of helping them. 

"X-wing starfighter, this is the Imperial Star Destroyer _Chimaera_ ," a crisp, polished voice announced over the comm. "Surrender now or be destroyed." 

Oh, this was bad. Luke scrambled his brains for ideas. There was no way to jump to hyperspace while the Interdictor's gravity field projectors aimed directly at them, so he'd have to deal with those first. He'd gone up against Interdictors before, but usually he had a whole squadron, if not an entire fleet, as back-up--and the Empire wasn't explicitly gunning for _him_ among the crowd. 

"Okay, Artoo, let's see if we can make it out of the gravity cone before the Star Destroyer grabs us," Luke said. "Drop all power from the deflector shields into the engines on my mark--set--GO!" 

He twisted the X-wing into a deep dive towards the cruiser and held his breath. 

Interdictor cruisers were big. They had to be, if they were going to have the mass to generate a large enough gravity well to disrupt another ship. But the downside to their size was that they were even slower to maneuver than a Star Destroyer, and the vast majority of the ships' power was directed into the projectors, rather than tractor beams or shielding. If he could get the X-wing into the shadow outside of the projectors' reach on the underside of the cruiser before the Star Destroyer caught him, they'd be free to make the jump to safety. 

Whatever the Imperials had expected, this wasn't it. The projectors turned to follow his new course, but Luke brought the X-wing in a 120 degree flip that he'd perfected as a teenager at Dead Man's Turn in Beggar's Canyon, and they weren't fast enough to keep up. Another few seconds, and he'd be clear--

With a mechanical whine, the X-wing shuddered to a halt for a heart-stopping second, jerking Luke back against his seat restraints so hard he almost choked. Then, slowly but inexorably over the protests of the sublight engines, the fighter slid backwards towards the waiting Star Destroyer. 

The stream of profanity from the astromech socket made Luke like a Naboo choirboy. He slumped back in his seat and closed his eyes, heart pounding as he considered his rapidly shrinking options. There was no guarantee what he was going to do next would work, but he'd exhausted more conventional options. The X-wing by itself wasn't strong enough to break the beam, but if he could just give it a nudge--

He took a deep breath to regain his bearings, relaxed every muscle in his body as best he could, and reached out with the Force. 

_Size matters not_. 

If he hadn't seen Yoda lift the X-wing out of the swamp with the merest lift of a finger, he would never have tried this little stunt. But to the Force, it didn't matter how big the X-wing was, or how small it was compared to its opponent. The X-wing was in one place, and it needed to move to a different one, and there was nothing keeping Luke from _pushing_ enough to counter the _Chimaera_ 's grip on it. 

No effort. No exertion. Just-- 

" _Now_!" he yelled to Artoo and the droid screamed as Luke threw all power into the engines. Warning lights flashed on the control panels, but the X-wing wrenched free as even as something exploded in the engines, buoyed by Luke's Force push and its own inertia. Seconds later, they were clear of the Interdictor's gravity field as Artoo scrambled to get the figures for a safe jump--any jump--far enough to keep the Empire from tailing them and--

A bolt slammed into the X-wing, spilling them sideways. Apparently, the Empire had given up on the tractor beam now and were aiming to cripple him.

"Don't worry about that now! Just get us out of here!" Luke shouted as Artoo recounted the damage assessment. He did his best to duck and weave the X-wing out of the stream of laser fire now issuing from the _Chimaera_ , but with all the deflector shields down to keep the engines running at full power, they weren't going to last much longer. 

Luke was too distracted to catch Artoo's next query. "Doesn't matter _where_ we jump to! Go! Go!" 

Artoo complied. The sky around them shifted into welcome starlines for a half-second, only to drop them back into empty space. 

They had--for the moment--escaped. 

***

Luke sighed and shook his head as he studied the reports from the X-wing's computer, all of which blinked an angry warning red. Maybe Yoda could have managed their escape with more grace; Luke considered himself lucky that maneuver had worked as well as it had on the first try. It wasn't something he'd ever practiced before. 

_Maybe I should have,_ he thought, as Artoo chimed in with a far more colorful assessment of the damage. Just in case Luke hadn't gotten the message by now, the droid had thoughtfully bordered the text of his report with exclamation marks interspersed between tiny cartoon skulls.

Luke's frantic Force push had overwhelmed the acceleration compensator, which in turn had fried the hyperdrive motivators--not enough so they couldn't make the first short hop, but enough that they wouldn't start up again after pausing to re-calibrate. The damage from the Star Destroyer's lasers hadn't helped, either, annihilating both the subspace radio antenna _and_ the long-distance transmission communicators. 

Luke didn't need Artoo's explanations to know just how precarious their situation was--and how unlikely they were to get out of it.

Luke stared vacantly out past the X-wing into the cold vacuum beyond, empty save for the brilliant pinpricks of light that marked distant stars--nothing _but_ starlight for light-years in every direction. Space was vast, and everything else in Luke's life--planets, asteroids, suns, stations, ships--was impossibly far away.

The good news was that the Empire was unlikely to find them here. The bad news that nobody else was likely to stumble across them, either. And with no way to call for help, that wasn't likely to change, even if Han and Leia noticed his disappearance and came looking for him. 

_So this is where it ends_ , he thought, contemplating the void. He was oddly calm--numb, really. The adrenaline was still coursing through his system, and the grim reality hadn't yet sunk in. 

_All things fade eventually,_ the Great Tree had said to him. _Even the stars burn out_. Luke's only mistake was assuming that it wouldn't happen to him so soon. 

_I though--thought I'd have more time, that's all_. 

Was that really true? He'd fully expected to die on the second Death Star, first from the Rebel's not-so-surprise attack, and then at the hands of the Emperor. It had been a miracle that he'd survived that day at all, a gift from the father he'd never really known. Luke had never been able to shrug off the sense he'd been living on borrowed time ever since. 

_And yet I didn't expect the end to look like--this._

What _had_ he expected? Dying in a burst of sparks and shrapnel in space while his comrades watched in horror? That was the way Rogue squadron pilots tended to go. He might have resigned his commission years ago, but the old habits still ran deep.

_At least that way I'd go out fighting. At least that way, I wouldn't be alone._

The Great Tree on Dagobah would probably object to that, arguing that the two of them were connected by the Force, just like everything else in the universe. Luke had to admit that while that was technically true in an abstract sense, it just wasn't the same. 

On his visit to the tree after Yoda's death, Luke had seen visions of thousands of possible futures for himself: as Emperor of the Galaxy, as an isolated hermit not unlike the mysterious figure who had contacted Luke in the cave; as a teacher and guide of brown-robed students scattered across space and time. Uneti trees rose and fell beneath the glittering backdrop of countless stars, over and over again, along with glimpses of the rooftop of the Imperial Palace at twilight, one of the few places on Coruscant where Luke felt truly at home and at peace.

So many possible futures, always in motion, just like Yoda had warned him that first time. Luke--and Emperor Palpatine--had learned the hard way that precognitive visions were not the most reliable guide to reality.

And it occurred to Luke now that his prescience might be limited to those futures in which he survived--that he could not see the thousands of timelines where he died because there was nothing _to_ see but darkness. 

He swallowed, his throat tight. There was so much he didn't know--about the future, about the Jedi, about everything. He'd hoped he could carry out Master Yoda's dying wish to pass on what he'd learned, restore the Jedi Order, plant uneti trees on every world in such numbers they could never be brought to the brink of extinction again. So many dreams, all gone, now. All hopeless. All lost. 

That wasn't true, of course. There would be others someday. Maybe Leia, maybe someone else. Maybe the Great Tree would wait another thousand years on Dagobah for another crop of seeds and a Jedi to plant them. But _Luke_ would no longer be there to witness it, and it wouldn't be the same. 

He sighed. _At least I've had a good life. I found Leia and Han and had more adventures than I ever thought possible. We won against the Empire. The war isn't over, but I've seen so much, done so much I've never thought possible. I even got to meet my father before he died._

 _At least I got to see the stars._

The irony was palpable. Luke had spent so much of his youth daydreaming about the view from outer space. Now they were going to be the last thing he saw before he slipped into darkness. 

But he wasn't going down without exhausting every possible option, he told himself. He'd gotten out of seemingly worse situations before. "At least I'm not clinging to one-handed to a weather vane," he said aloud, trying to laugh at the absurdity. 

Which reminded him. _Leia,_ he called silently, pouring his heart and soul into the effort. _Leia, hear me. Leia!_

Silence. Luke waited a few moments and tried again. Still no response. 

It didn't mean anything. Maybe Leia was busy or asleep or distracted enough she hadn't heard him. Or maybe the Empire had succeeded in capturing her and she and Han were now prisoners somewhere. There was no way to know unless she contacted him, and even then, it wouldn't do him much good if Leia couldn't send help his way. 

The numbness was wearing off now and panic was rising in its place, like the churning waters of a flash flood. Luke forced his breathing to slow, lapsing into a Jedi calming meditation until the emotions had subsided enough to think clearly again. Panic was what got you killed in situations like this and he wasn't going to panic. 

He wished there were other Jedi to call on. There ought to be others. It shouldn't be just Luke and his twin sister. If he survived this, he needed to work on fixing that immediately.

Yes, there was still a war to fight. Yes, he hadn't had much luck finding students or surviving Jedi before now. Dev Sibwarra had been promising, but he had died defending Bakura from the Ssi-ruuvi invaders. Nick Rostu had chosen to go his own way in the aftermath of the Mindor debacle. Luke hadn't met anyone else with even fragmentary talent since. 

But there was the man from Jomark that Luke had glimpsed in the cave--whom Luke had been trying to reach before the Empire had intervened--and the mysterious woman the Great Tree had shown him. Luke didn't know if he could reach either of them on his own, or if they were able and willing to help him if they could. 

He didn't even know their names--though the man had known Luke's, somehow. Odd. Or maybe not, given that Luke was a war hero--at least on the New Republic side of the line--and a constant fixture on the Holonet even after his retirement. 

Luke put his head in his hands, massaging his temples in a vain effort to stave off a headache. He'd try reaching Leia again later. And if he couldn't, he take a risk and reach out to the mysterious strangers he'd witnessed on Dagobah. 

"Okay, Artoo," he said slowly, bringing himself back to the present. "This is quite a doozy. Let's see what we can fix with the parts we have on hand--" 

Sometimes, the Force could save you. And sometimes--most of the time--you had to save yourself. 

***

Artoo refused to let Luke into his emergency evac suit for extravehicular repairs, flipping out of his astromech socket and depending on his maglev repulsors to keep him affixed to the surface instead of drifting out into space. Luke wasn't worried--even if the droid slipped, he could use the Force to yank him back--but it was strange to watch the little droid work from the cockpit and not be able to help. 

Several hours later, even Artoo had to admit defeat, trundling back to his socket with the droid equivalent of a heavy sigh. They'd managed to get the subspace antenna up and running again, thanks to some clever equipment modifications, but neither the hyperdrive nor the long-distance communicators were functioning. 

Even with the subspace antenna broadcasting at maximum range, Luke didn't need to ask Artoo to know that the odds of anyone stumbling across them out here were infinitely small. 

_But not zero_ , he reminded himself. _There's still hope. And if I can just let Leia know I'm in trouble--_

But there was no answer when he called her name. 

All right. Time to try the strangers from his visions. 

Luke closed his eyes, visualized the old man's face in his mind, pressing out tentatively with the Force. He'd never actually done this with anyone except Leia, and his father, and wasn't sure if he was going about it the right way. 

_Hello? Can you hear me? This is Luke Skywalker. I need your help--_

Silence. There was only his own voice, echoing into the abyss. 

He waited a few more minutes and tried again. Still nothing. 

Luke had even less to go on with the woman the Great Tree had shown him. There hadn't been much detail in his vision--only a shadowy outline, devoid of any obvious identifiers. Luke wasn't sure if that was enough for him to make contact. 

_She calls but not for me,_ the tree had said. Well, maybe if she were listening, she'd pick up Luke's plea, too. It was worth a shot. 

_Hello?_ he said, pushing the thought outward towards the silhouette in his memory. _This is Luke Skywalker. Can you hear me? I need your help--_

He went on like this for some time, his babble becoming increasingly inane as the seconds ticked away. But again, nothing. 

"So much for that," he said aloud, aware he was rapidly exhausting the possible options. "Artoo, drop everything into low-power mode except the subspace antenna. You're going to broadcast a distress signal and alert me at once if there's any response. I'm going into a hibernation trance and I'll wake up every few days for food and water"-- _and to call for Leia_ \--"until we're found." 

Artoo couldn't argue with Luke's logic, though it was clear from the astromech's whistles that he was unhappy about being left alone in the darkness without Luke or the X-wing's computer for company. Now doubt the droid would still be there, floating and conscious in the void longer after both of his companions had permanently powered down--

"It's okay, Artoo," Luke said, as reassuring as he could under the circumstances. "I'll be fine. I've done this before, remember? Someone will find us eventually. We just have to hold out until they get here." 

Artoo's plaintive beeps meant he knew Luke was lying, but he didn't argue the point. 

Luke settled himself back in his seat, and began to slow his heart rate in preparation for the hibernation trance. The last thing he saw before he fell asleep--the last thing he might _ever_ see, if he was wrong about being rescued--were the glittering, distant, and above all, indifferent stars. 

All things considered, it wasn't the worst way to go. 

***

It was a shame there were no dreams in Jedi hibernation trances because Luke really could have used a warning about what was to come. Then again, given his abysmal track record with precognition, it was probably just as well he had no idea what was in store for him. 

There was no gradual transition between sleeping and waking. One moment, Luke was unconscious, the next moment, he was awake, gasping for breath at Artoo's frantic whistling. The Corellian Engineering Corp Action IV transport floating in Luke's field of vision seemed like a hallucination at first, until the droid confirmed that it was, in fact real. 

A ship. A ship that _wasn't_ an obvious Imperial ally. Could he really be so lucky? Was it chance or his calls through the Force that had led this transport to the rescue--? 

Well, actually, Luke wasn't so sure about the "rescue" part just yet. 

Still, it wasn't like he had much choice at the moment. He flipped the receiver and opened the comm channel to the usual hailing frequency for ships in distress. "This is New Republic X-wing AA-589 in need of assistance. Repeat: New Republic X-wing AA-589 in need of--" 

"Acknowledged, X-wing," a brisk male voice said. "This is the _Wild Karrde_. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Hyperdrive," Luke explained, as the _Wild Karrde_ approached. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something off about the ship, even though it appeared ordinary enough on the X-wing's scanners. "Unless you happen to have replacement motivators for a ship this size, I'm going to need transport and towing to a system with an adequate repair yard." 

"Let me speak to the captain." There was a short pause before the man returned. "He says we can offer you passage to our destination system for five thousand credits."

Odd that he wouldn't say where that was. Not that Luke had much choice in the matter at this point. As long as it wasn't in Imperial territory--

"I accept," Luke said. "What about my ship?" 

"That'll cost you extra," the man admitted dryly. "You're lucky we've got some extra space in our holds. I'll have to check with the captain for the exact figures, though." 

"That's fine." Cost was no object, not with the credit line Leia could draw for him. Luke wasn't going to tell the freighter's crew that, lest they be unscrupulous enough to get ideas about holding him for ransom. 

Luke had no illusions about what he might be stepping into here. What were ordinary traders doing out here, so far from any inhabited system, especially with the recent Imperial activity in this quadrant? Odds were good that the _Wild Karrde_ and its crew were smugglers or pirates. If he wasn't careful, he could be jumping straight from the frying-pan into the fire. 

Judging from the soft moans issuing from the astromech socket, Artoo had similar concerns. "I know it's risky, but I think we have to trust them," Luke said softly. "Stay alert and look out for double-crosses, okay?" 

"Okay, X-wing, we're coming around," the comm crackled. "Steer yourself in whenever you’re ready."

The _Wild Karrde_ 's small docking bay was directly above him, its outer door gaping invitingly. The maneuver would have been easier if the _Wild Karrde_ had a tractor beam, but that wasn't standard issue for freighters, even highly modified ones. The docking bay itself was half-filled with crates, but there was enough room for Luke to safely maneuver the X-wing inside and land without incident. 

Once on solid ground, Luke stripped off his orange flight suit and helmet, and strapped on the hip belt with his blaster and lightaber.   
His comlink went in one pocket, and the mysterious silver device from the cave in the other. Thus fortified, he popped the hatch and extended the emergency ladder to climb down to the ground. 

"You stay with the ship in case of trouble," Luke ordered Artoo, who was already halfway out of his socket. "I'll be right back." 

The droid gurgled unhappily, but grudgingly complied. 

There was a young man in standard grey ship's coveralls on the far side of the docking bay, watching Luke's emergence with interest. "Welcome aboard the _Wild Karrde_ ," he said as Luke approached, gesturing down the corridor. "The captain is expecting you." 

Luke followed at his heels, all his senses alert in search of threats. His guide seemed harmless enough, but there were too many questions left unanswered for Luke to be fully comfortable with his situation yet. The _Wild Karrde_ seemed oddly understaffed for a freighter of this size and complexity--there were only five beings ahead, and nothing at all alive in any of the aft sections... which were oddly dark and spotty to his tentative probes. 

The guide led Luke to a door, which slid open as he stepped to one side. "Captain Karrde will see you now," he said, waving toward the open door.

"Thanks," Luke said, noting the now-obvious pun in the freighter's name, and stepped inside. He didn't know what to expect. 

What he found was a small but well-organized office, with an entire wall taken up with communications and encryption equipment, on par with some of NRI's best. In front of him was a desk with stacks of flimsis and datapads--and a bearded man with brown skin and long, dark hair streaked with silver watching him intently. 

"Greetings, Commander Skywalker," Captain Karrde said cooly, sizing Luke up with his gaze. "I'm Talon Karrde." 

For a moment, Luke was startled at how quickly he'd been recognized, before he remembered the lightsaber at his belt. "No longer Commander, I'm afraid," he said to cover his surprise. "I resigned my Alliance commission after the action at Mindor." 

"Of course," Karrde said. If he was put out at the mistake, he didn't show it. "What brings you out to this corner of the galaxy, _Jedi_ Skywalker?" 

"I was ambushed by an Imperial Star Destroyer about half a light-year away," Luke said. 

"Yes, the Empire is still quite active in this part of the galaxy," Karrde agreed evenly. 

Luke's skin crawled. Talon Karrde's sabacc face was impressive, but Luke was more concerned by the complete lack of emotional resonance in the Force. Any legitimate trader working in New Republic space--hell, even pirates and smugglers--ought to react more strongly to news of a Star Destroyer so close by. Unless Karrde already had an understanding with the Empire. In which case--

"I imagine a man like yourself is accustomed to giving the Imperials trouble," Karrde said. "Still, that's doubly impressive if you were on your own without reinforcements." 

"Thank you," Luke said with a slight nod, acknowledging the compliment. "Allow me to thank _you_ for the rescue." 

Karrde still hadn't taken his eyes off Luke's face. "Is five thousand credits for you and three thousand for your ship acceptable?" 

"That's fine," Luke said, grateful it wasn't more. Karrde had him more or less over a barrel and they both knew it. "Where _is_ your intended destination, anyway?" 

Karrde raised an eyebrow. "Berchest," he said, naming a popular tourist destination in the Anthos sector. Luke would have no problem picking up supplies or hitching a ride home from there. 

"That will work," Luke said. "I don't suppose you'd allow me to take advantage of your hospitality and send a message to the New Republic to let them know where I am?" 

His tone was light, but the question itself was a challenge: _Am I your guest? Or am I your prisoner?_

Karrde's eyes flicked up and down across Luke's face, not intimidated in the slightest. "You're not what I expected," he said at last. "Now that I think about it, that's not surprising--myth and ignorance and terrible holos have distorted everything so a clear picture of the Jedi is all but impossible." 

Still not an answer. Luke eased his body into combat stance and reached out with the Force to survey his surroundings. There was no sign of the crew member outside the door, but everyone else was more or less where they'd been a few minutes ago. Where had the man in gray coveralls gone? 

"I'm not a fan of the holos myself. But you didn't answer my question," Luke said. 

"Do you know how we found you out there?" 

Of course he didn't. His confusion must have shown on his face, because Karrde chuckled. "I can't take any credit for that. One of my associates, Mara Jade, led us here. She's on the bridge at the moment." He gestured towards a display on the wall of equipment, with grainy but recognizable footage what must be the freighter's bridge. 

Luke stared. There were three other people on the display, but he had eyes only for the one at the far terminal, busily tapping away at her console. It was the woman the Great Tree had shown him, no question about it. She was silhouetted against the viewport, backlit by the stars with her face turned away, but the profile was unmistakable. 

Miracle of miracles, he'd found her. Or, rather, she had heard his call for help after all, and found _him_. 

Luke's mind raced as he considered the possibilities. Maybe he wouldn't have to be alone for much longer. Maybe this would be the start of something new, something wonderful, a whole new order of Jedi--

Then she turned and stared directly into the security camera, a sneer of disdain on her face. Waves of emotions radiated outwards like an electric current, aimed directly at Luke--

It was _nothing_ like the yearning he'd expected--what Luke had automatically assumed was the same longing for adventure that had led to his Jedi training in the first place. Instead, he was overcome with bolts of hatred, bitterness, grief, and pain all mingled together in jabs as clear and precise as Imperial laser fire. 

She _hated_ him more than anyone else he had ever encountered, up to and including the Lords of the Sith--and she'd just saved his life. 

"Yes, that’s her," Karrde said, watching Luke's reaction closely. "I don't suppose you could tell me what you've done to antagonize her like that?" 

It took Luke another second to find his voice. She was so strong. So twisted. So angry. "I've never met her before," he managed.

"A pity," Karrde said. "I was hoping you'd be able to resolve that little puzzle for me; it's not a subject she cares to talk about. Ah, well." He got to his feet. "Let me say in advance that I’m very sorry it has to be this way." 

There was the double-cross, which he'd been expecting any moment since Karrde had refused to let him contact the New Republic government. That was Luke's cue to draw his lightsaber--only to be caught off-guard by the stun bolt slamming into his back before he could complete the motion. 

There was no one behind him--he would have sensed that--so _how--?_

His vision went black and he fell to the ground, utterly bewildered as the darkness closed over him.

**Author's Note:**

> With all due respect to Mara, I've always been skeptical of Zahn's assertion that Mara snagging Luke's lightsaber on Jabba's sail barge would have stopped him for long, so I've cut that out here in favor of a different connection.
> 
> If you're curious what I think would have happened if Mara _had_ been on the sail barge, check out my fic [Smooth Sailing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17278991).


End file.
